But I didn’t panic. Oh no. I very calmly did what any independent, self-reliant young woman with her own home would do.

I called my daddy and cried that I broke my house.

Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence in my life.

Call me melodramatic if you will, but I tend to rank anything broken around the house that I can’t fix on my own as catastrophic on the level of a Godzilla attack. And consequently, if I call my dad and just say “Hey dad, my garbage disposal isn’t working. Can you come take a look at it?” he’s not coming. But if I cry and tell him that I broke my house, I’ll usually get the help that I need.

Unfortunately, this has led to a bit of a boy-who-cried-wolf (or in my case, girl-who-cried-broken-house) dilemma. So when I told my dad that my house was broken, he sighed and asked what it was this time. And when I told him what the problem was, he tried to tell me how to fix it myself.

Meaning what I heard was something akin to Charlie Brown’s teacher talking. Seriously. He told me to try pushing the button on the bottom of the garbage disposal and I heard “whomp whomp whomp whomp whomp.”

But I’m making an attempt to be less helpless, so I decoded what he was saying and eventually ventured into the murky shadowland under my kitchen sink looking for this mysterious button that he spoke of.

And, feeling like Indiana Jones about to swipe that weird gold thing in Raiders of the Lost Ark (and equally expecting a giant bolder to chase me out of my kitchen after pushing the button), I pushed it.

And nothing happened.

Crap.

“It didn’t work, daddy.”

Another sigh. And some more whomping that equated to “check the fuse box.” Which I’m actually an expert at, because thanks to those lovely “hot girl problems” that I have, I blow fuses pretty regularly when I’m drying my hair. (And because I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy, blowing fuses sounds really dirty and I’m giggling as I’m writing it. I also can’t say the word “penis” with a straight face.)

But no fuses had blown. And my dad’s next instruction, to stick an appropriately-sized allen wrench in the hole on the bottom of the garbage disposal and turn was so far outside of my home-repair abilities that I was forced to return to my initial assertion that my house was broken.

And for the first time in my life, my daddy seemed reluctant to come over and fix my broken house. Which led me to the only logical conclusion that I could draw from this scenario: it’s time for me to get married. Because there are just some tasks that I’m incapable of doing (or, more realistically, completely unwilling to do) on my own. Specifically, I mean anything more complicated than a burned out lightbulb.

I’m not going to lie and claim that I’m the poster child for feminism—if you’re a loyal Sara*ndipity reader, you’d know that’s not true anyway considering that I wrote a post on hot girl problems and one a while ago about my inability to jumpstart a car or change a tire. But I think it’s only fair that guys should have to deal with certain icky jobs around the house that I don’t want to do. Like anything dealing with plumbing. Or killing bugs.

The girls reading this are probably all nodding right now, while the guys are asking why that’s supposed to be fair.

Well, I’ll tell you. There are two main reasons.

Okay, I guess there are other reasons to get married as well. Like love and children and tax breaks and all that stuff. But for me, I think the main draw right now would be having someone to take care of all the things that I can’t (won’t) do.

For example, if there is anything wrong with the toilet, I’m not fixing it. I’m just not. A couple years ago, mine was running randomly, and my dad tried to walk me through the process of replacing that rubber floaty thingy in the tank to make it stop.

Three hours, some yelling (on my part), some crying (on both of our parts), and a minor apartment flood later, my dad came over and fixed my toilet. And to this day, I have no idea why I was incapable of doing that myself when it took him less than thirty seconds to do, nor do I have any idea what that rubber floaty thingy is called.

But it’s the kind of thing that, if I had a live-in man, could have been fixed quickly, with less yelling, crying, and flooding.

So, with no rational solution to the garbage disposal situation in sight (because I wasn’t going to pay someone to fix it. I’m broke from buying tickets to see Bruce four times in the same week on this upcoming tour), I started husband hunting.

Which did not go so well.

Apparently men these days are looking for a little more romance than, “Let’s get hitched so you can fix my garbage disposal and any other random crap that I manage to break around my house.” Who knew gender roles had done such a complete 180?

Luckily, my dad proved that he does love me and doesn’t want me to marry someone solely for plumbing skills, because he came over bright and early the next morning with a set of allen wrenches, and within approximately 2.6 seconds of walking in the front door, my garbage disposal was working like a champ again.

Which made me feel like a complete moron for not being able to fix it myself. But better to be a moron with a working garbage disposal and a daddy who loves me than a moron with a broken garbage disposal, right?

Meta

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